Seattle 1968. American Ethnological Society Monograph 47. 8vo., 284pp., index. Fine in VG DJ.

Double Descent in an African Society: The Afikpo Village-Group

Ottenberg, Simon

University of Washington Press

Masked Rituals of Afikpo: The Context of an African Art

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Published for the Henry Art Gallery by the University of Washington Press

This is an anthropological study of boyhood in a group of related Igbo villages called Afikpo, in souteastern Nigeria. About half of the book is taken up with the description and analysis of adolescent initiation rites, providing a close and detailed view of rituals that for the most part have only been touched upon in literature.The work makes use of psychoanalytic theory, with a logic that is grounded in data, blended with traditional cultural anthropological analysis. Ottenberg’s understanding of the dynamics of the symbols and their unstated meanings contributes to the study of ritual process in any society. The data on ritual initiation alo0ne make this a major contribution to African ethnography, and Ottenberg’s descriptive material on male secrecy and related gender distinctions provides a background fora more general understanding of West African secret societies.His examination of all phases of childhood at Afikpo--not just initiation--reveals how one society comes to terms with the special needs of infancy, while answering the society’s need to produce a certain kind of adult.Ottenberg rejects the common notion that an adolescent arrives at his initiation as a tabula rasa upon which society’s instructon is etched; he also rejects the equally common assumption that initiation marks a summing up or completion of socialization. Instead, Ottenberg analyzes initiation rites in the context of the boys’ earlier experiences, as part of an ongoing and unfinished process of socialization.He traces the life and experiences of boys from birth through adolescent initiation to adulthood, with a focus on the ritual aspect, since rituals through their symbolic content reveal a society’s attitudes and values. The Afikpo initiation rites recall aspects of the rites of birth and other early childhood experiences, and Ottenberg shows how many of these rituals are designed to assist in the transition from one stage to the next.The wealth of materials and close attention to detail in the analyses of boyhood rituals among the Afikpo reflect Ottenberg’s superb skills as a field investigator. The detail in which he presents his data contributes greatly to our understanding of Afikpo cosmological beliefs and social structure. The presentation provides important materials for evaluating the interrelationship between adult and boyhood secret societies, making it valuable to scholars of other areas. Boyhood Rituals in an African Society makes a significant contribution to both psychological anthropology and African studies, but it will also be of interest to other scholars concerned with the cross-cultural study of socialization and childhood.

Boyhood Rituals in an African Society: An Interpretation

From a symposium held in conjunction with the exhibition The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group at the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, 16 essays examine the design background of Nsukka art; its relationship to contemporary Nigerian art; and the larger context of African, Third World, and western art. Artists, art scholars, and curators from Nigeria and the West contribute. There is no index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art

Arts & Photography

National Museum of African Art (U. S.)

Nsukka Group and the State of Nigerian Contemporary Art

History & Criticism

Univ of Washington Pr

In response to political and social upheaval, University of Nigeria artists have turned to the obscure Igbo culture. Drawing on extensive interviews with the artists, and analyzing their art and writings, anthropologist Simon Ottenberg shows how the artists have used the symbols of a little-studied tradition to celebrate their culture and create visual commentaries on their country. 78 color, 115 b&amp;w illustrations .

NEW TRADITIONS FROM NIGERIA

Smithsonian

Miranda Olayinka Burney-Nicol, who signed her work OLAYINKA, was a pioneer in modern African art. She belonged to the first generation of African artists who did not follow indigenous art practices, but drew on a variety of European media while experimenting with them, yet her images were generally drawn from Africa. Born in 1927 into Creole (Krio) society in the capital city of Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa, she was raised in an Africanized version of British culture, studying in a missionary school.   After teaching for a year in the country s interior, a scholarship brought her to New York City for five years, with side visits to Indiana and Mexico, studying the arts and the humanities. She was also a professional storyteller of African tales, and a singer and dancer. She then studied murals and oil panting at a London art school, while also spending time in France, Germany and Spain, meeting artists and viewing European art. She returned to Sierra Leone in 1958 and for the next ten years she was the Government Artist, assisting the development of the visual arts in preparation for the country s 1961 independence and afterwards, during which time she produced a number of murals for the government while maintaining a private art practice. For the next twenty years she created art in Freetown, with trips to Europe, Lagos, Nigeria and Lusaka, Zambia, to exhibit and to study, before going to live in England in 1988 to continue her art career. She died in 1996   Olayinka saw her life and art as the fusion of African and Western cultures. On the African side she was not only interested in the culture of her birth, itself a fusion, but in the indigenous cultures of the country s interior, and she drew into her art visual materials from elsewhere in Africa, particularly Egypt, and also Mexico and China. She created in a wide range of media: drawings, oil paintings, public and private murals, watercolors, tempera, monotypes woodcuts, linocuts, collages, constructions created out of materials from a Freetown market, incised wooden tablets, and she decorated indigenous and commercial cloth, designing clothing, chairs, tables, and house screens. She had a fashion show in Freetown and another in Paris based on indigenous textile materials,   A strong feminist, Olayinka was only briefly married, forsaking the usual African modern artist s life as a teacher to live and work as an independent artist. She struggled to sell her work in Freetown, where modern art was just beginning to be known, and in Europe where simplistic views abounded as to what a modern African artist should create. A restless individual, her many travels paralleled her movements from media to media. I am a ship at sea, she once proclaimed.   Olayinka s visual themes included the mother and child, the family, the beautiful scenery around Freetown, the penetrating studies of human figures, the indigenous masquerade figures, Sierra Leone history, and the underlying unity of the diverse cultures in the country. The book also explores the cultural and social life, and the artistic background of Olayinka s world in Freetown during her childhood and again after her returned to the city and it examines her relationships to the Freetown s artistic community. The book also sets her artistic career in the context of the development of modern art in other parts of Africa, showing her career to have been part of a larger artistic movement.   The book contains numerous photographs of Olayinka s art and is based on archival and published materials, personal interviews, and correspondence in the United States, England and Sierra Leone.    This incisive and groundbreaking analysis of the art of Olayinka Miranda Burney-Nicol narrates the career of a female pioneer African modernist within the Sierra-Le

Olayinka: A Woman's View

Africa World+press

The author, as an adolescent, wanted to be a polar explorer. He did not seem to care whether he went to the North or the South Pole. But at Northwestern University, he became interested in its African program, one of two major programs in anthropology there. The other was on African cultures in the Caribbean and South America. So as a graduate student, he did a study of African cultural survival in a community along the coast of Georgia. However, he was more interested in Africa at a time when Americans realized, after World War II, how little they knew about it. Government and foundation funds became available, and Ottenberg took advantage of it for his first African research in 1952-1953 on a year's grant for work in Nigeria. That began a long career there, where his interests varied over the years--from children and adult masking to family life to art and other subjects. He found African culture to be anything but simple; rather it is very complex. Each aspect has links to others; it's a web of behaviors to be traced in which language played key roles while Western cultural influences were changing African cultures.

Anthropologists in America Take a First Look at Africa

History

Africa

Fulton Books

Design and Music in a Changing Northern Sierra Leone Chiefdom

Xlibris US

This is an anthropological and historical study of Wara Wara Balodea Chiefdoma, an ancient and formerly very isolated, hill chiefdom in northern Sierra Leone. West Africa, called Wara Wara Bafodea, with rice growing in the chiefdom's south and grain in its north. The book is based on two-year's personal study in 1979-1980, contrasting the chiefdoms music with its art and designs, to arrive at an understanding of the elements of its culture. Numerous color and black and white photographs, mostly taken by the author, illuminate the work. The book is also a study of a changing cultures, with Wara Wara Bafodea culture and language becoming overwhelmed by both Muslim and Christian influences -an African society undergoing rapid change from a an elemental indigenous society to a complex multicultural one.

No About the Book information available at this time.

Imagined Tales from Southeastern Nigeria

Literature & Fiction

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ottenberg, Simon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ottenberg, Simon

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ottenberg, Simon. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Double Descent in an African Society: The Afikpo Village-Group

Masked Rituals of Afikpo: The Context of an African Art

Boyhood Rituals in an African Society: An Interpretation

The Nsukka Artists and Nigerian Contemporary Art

NEW TRADITIONS FROM NIGERIA

Olayinka: A Woman's View

Anthropologists in America Take a First Look at Africa

Design and Music in a Changing Northern Sierra Leone Chiefdom

Design and Music in a Changing Northern Sierra Leone Chiefdom

Imagined Tales from Southeastern Nigeria